Steven E. Landsburg has a piece in Slate proclaiming the FairTax (yes, I’ve decided to give in and go with the no-space version for now) to be “brilliant.” After all the discussion here about difficulties with enforcement and transition, along with questions about whether progressivity over people’s lifetimes is just as good as (or …
Gruesome video of ‘champagne’ destruction
I just got an URGENT e-mail from the Office of Champagne U.S.A. informing me that
Belgian Customs authorities seized and destroyed a shipment of over 3,200 bottles of André sparkling wine. The shipment was seized at the port of Anvers, Belgium, on Tuesday. It is the latest in a series of seizures in the last four years, representing
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Daycare—for my dad
My folks returned to Japan yesterday after three weeks here with their four kids and 10 grandkids in New Jersey. As many of you know, my mom is in the advanced stages of cancer. They made the trip against the advice of her doctors, though her oncologist had finally acquiesced: “You can’t live for your cancer,” he’d said.
One issue we …
Of archaic banks and egghead financial journalists who want to keep America poor
A reader writes:
I recently read your article [“Reward the Good Guys“] in a September 10, 2007 issue of Time. It certainly makes me curious why you believe the tightening of money for mortgages is a good thing; also, why you think that it might better be in the domain of banks and thrifts? Do you own more than one piece of property? If
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Doctors and lawyers: no longer prestigious?
I live in an immigrant-rich community in northern New Jersey. My Asian-American friends who grew up in this country tell of being informed from a very early age that their parents wished them to become either doctors or lawyers. Oh, okay, or concert violinists. It had to do with the comprehensibility of those jobs; while the workings of …
Bill to Hill: You can count on me
Were any of you surprised by Hillary’s win last night? I was. I was getting that pit in my stomach I had all throughout 2004, from the moment John Kerry’s candidacy was declared. Not that Hillary Clinton is John Kerry; far from it. But after her stunning loss in Iowa, I thought, Oh, no: doom is nigh.
But dangit if she didn’t pull it …
The case for clawing back some of that Wall Street pay
The University of Chicago’s Ragharam Rajan has a smart piece in the FT on one of my favorite topics–the fact that many people in the financial sector get paid big bucks each year for taking bets that will inevitably go sour a few years down the road. They’re producing not alpha, which is true investment outperformance, but beta, which …
How we will know when real estate has truly bottomed
The National Association of Realtors issued another upbeat forecast this morning, prompting Barry Ritholtz to assemble, with help from InvesTech, a nice list of similar (and wrong) pronouncements going back to 2005. Which led me to daydream:
WASHINGTON, January 08, 2009 – Over the next few months, existing-home sales are expected to
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I need a new beat
In 2006, TIME’s new editor, Rick Stengel, called me into his office. “What do you want to do here?” he asked.
“I want to keep writing,” I said. Financial considerations may someday force me into an editing job, I told him, but for now I want to manage like I want scabies.
“What do you want to write about?” he asked.
“The workplace,” I …
The downside of telecommuting: gossip vacuum
I’ve been in the office a lot in 2008—yes, the whole week of it—because I’m closing a couple stories. It’s kind of nice to be back, actually. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still a rabid advocate of results-oriented, flexible work. I still think a mobile workforce is the way of the near future.
But I also know for certain that by being …
Patry tries to figure out the RIAA’s line on home copying: It’s not a straight one
Making a mockery of the claim by several commenters on my post about the newspaper business a while back that Google produces no journalism, the company’s senior copyright counsel, William Patry, has written a wonderful exhaustively review of what exactly the Recording Industry Association of America has said through the years about …
I got sassed in the FT!
What the @$##$%^. So I get a poke from my buddy in PR, Daniel Kile, that my blog gots me a mention in the Financial Times. The FT! Now, blogger friends, believe me when I say WiP cherishes every nod from the likes of RiceDaddies and LaDawn and Poop and Boogies. But the FT! The Wall Street Journal of Europe! The business bible of world …